


Terrifying Tolkien Week 2017

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Torture, Creepy, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-23 09:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12504148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: day #1: all shall fade (Eärendil)day #2: stars hide your fires (Curufin)day #3: wild hunt (Nessa)day #4: the iron price (Thuringwethil)day #5: beauty is terror (Annatar)day #6: blood is thicker than water (Turgon)day #7: free choice (Maglor)





	1. all shall fade

When Elwing begins suffering the first of the birthing pangs, Eärendil is confident that he is prepared. He has long been regaled with tales concerning the peculiarities of childbirth among the Elves – midwives and neighbors and councilors and random denizens of Sirion simply coming up to their beloved Mariner in the streets, all eager to inaugurate a Man into their mysteries.

So he knows to expect that Elwing will have some premonition of the children to come – twins, she says. Boys. Intertwined even now, nestled within her.

He even knows to expect the screams.

It is because they are twins, he is told – rare, among the Elves.

And ill-fated, though none say this to him.

_(ill-fated, he hears them whisper all the same)_

_(all shall fade)_

But his early confidence is shaken all the same by the enormity, the longevity, the gut-wracking intimacy of Elwing’s pain. Day shades to dusk, and still she labors. Dusk slants into night, and still she cries out. Night deepens further and further, and still Eärendil’s soothing words, his hands, his kisses, take nothing of her burden from her.

For all that he never met the queen before her death so long ago, Eärendil has never felt the loss of Nimloth of Doriath so keenly. Neither, it seems by the barely-veiled panic in her eyes, has Elwing herself.

“It will be well,” he murmurs, ignoring the pulverizing strength of her grip on his hand when finally they coax her to lie down and push.

“Please, let all be well,” he pleads of the stars, when finally Elwing’s screams have drawn the midwives to shoo him from the room in concern.  

And it seems that the stars must hear him, for when finally he is permitted to return, Elwing is drawn but alive, and she cradles twin bundles to her chest.

Silent twin bundles.

“Are – are they well?” he whispers, ducking to place a kiss to her forehead. Surely even no Elven child is quite so noiseless?

“They are well,” a midwife clucks.

Elwing says naught, but blinks, blearily, and from their places at their mother’s breast, Eärendil’s sons watch him with wide, solemn gray eyes. He can almost imagine that their brows furrow in sync. Judging him.  

He did not expect that these children would be quite so aware of the world, having been within it only moments.

And yet, there they are, watching him.

 

~ ~ ~

One of the first things that Eärendil was told, when Elwing conceived, was that Elven mothers receive a premonition of their children – their temperaments, their minds, even their futures – shortly after their births. So he knows to expect that Elwing will name the babes – his sons, Eärendil has sons! – and that these names will herald something about the boys.  

But a day goes by – and then another, and another – and still Elwing has not proffered their babes’ names.

Not to Eärendil, and not to any of the nurses and midwives who hover about them, protective in a way that Eärendil imagines they would not be, were he an Elven mate.

But he does notice her, sometimes, looking down at them in puzzlement, as if the premonition has been received and it has puzzled her in some way.

“Perhaps if you just tell me,” he suggests, the next time he sees her looking at them so. “Will that make it easier?”

“I –“ She seems to consider this for a moment, and then shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

He waits. He does not understand what she is going through, but he will be patient, and supportive, no matter what she needs.

“Their names,” she starts, and then stops again. “I – I do not understand. Their names. . .”

She comes to some decision – he sees it happen. And he knows, then, that whatever she will say next, it is not the names that she was given for their sons.

“Elros. And Elrond.”

But Eärendil loves his wife, and he loves his newborn sons, and he trusts that if Elwing thinks to hide her premonition, she must have good reason to do so.

“Elros and Elrond,” he repeats, and he can feel the great grin growing across his face. “My sons. My sons!”

Elwing laughs at him, her voice low and weak, as he springs from the chair to whirl an imaginary partner about the room in an ungraceful jig upon air, but Eärendil does not care. His wife is well and his sons have names!

“Elros and Elrond, Elrond and Elros, Elros and Elrond! Welcome, boys, welcome!”

As if recognizing the sound of their new names, the twins open their eyes as one. They remain silent, and watchful, as ever they have been, but Elwing is still laughing, so Eärendil tells himself that he does not mind their stares.

 

~ ~ ~

And it is not that theirs are poor names – not at all!

Consider, for instance, how much worse they could have portended, as Eärendil has heard told of other mothers and their babes!

_(Too-Beautiful Golden-Tongued Rash-and-Wrathful Deadly-Fair Little-Father Blood-haired Doomed)_

But the twins’ names do sound familiar, somehow.

He would be able to puzzle it out, Eärendil thinks, if only he could remember where he had heard others like them before. . .

 

~ ~ ~

The children grow faster than even the midwives had suspected, given their half-mannish heritage.

Well. Say not ‘the children,’ though, and rather, ‘the twins.’

For Elros and Elrond look like children. And they sound like children. And they certainly act and speak as though they have observed children very closely, and are doing their best to mimic recognizable behaviors.

Eärendil loves his sons – of course he does.

But he has also come to suspect that they are not children.

Whatever the twins are, though, Eärendil does not take to the sea to avoid their too-old, too-watchful, too-knowing eyes.

He does not.

And neither does he take to the sea to avoid the way his wife looks at them – with a frown and a furrowed brow, as if she knows who or what they _are_ , and is trying to persuade herself that she does not.

 

~ ~ ~

The Fëanorians never send an embassy demanding the return of their father’s gem.

Eärendil is far enough apart from the quarrels of his wife’s race that he never thinks to question why this this might be so.

 

~ ~ ~

When the time comes for him to sail again – and longer, and farther, than he has ever ventured before – Eärendil kneels before the twins and embraces them.

_(for he loves them, he does, whatever other emotions he feels for them besides)_

“You have heard that I am sailing into the West, yes?” he asks. “I go to seek the gods, to beg their aid for our people.”

They nod.

In synchrony.

“You will return,” says Elros. It may be a demand; it may be a statement.

“You cannot leave our sister,” says Elrond. It may be a premonition; it may be a command.

“Your – sister?” Eärendil asks.

Elwing has not told him that she had conceived again. And if she had, how would the twins know that they have a new sibling?

“She has lost enough,” says Elros.

“More than enough,” says Elrond.

“Mother,” says Elros.

“Father,” says Elrond.

“Us,” they say together.  

Eärendil simply draws them closer, the twins _(his sons, his sons, they are *his* sons)_.

Even he knows enough not to promise them that they can never be lost again.

 


	2. stars, hide your fires

~~~~

No sooner have the council doors swung shut behind them than Tyelperinquar has launched into his latest round of accusations. “Atar, you are baiting Findaráto again.”

It is difficult to decide whether it is the impertinence or the timing or the obviousness of this statement that galls him most. Of course Curufinwë was baiting his half-mad cousin – without his goading, who knows whether even Findaráto would have been dull-witted enough to be taken in by their scruffy Mannish visitor! But the coming of the Adan Beren is shaping up to be an opportunity that Curufinwë will not waste – even if his own son, for whom all this is intended, never learns to control his wagging tongue in the possible presence of observers.

Not that Tyelkormo is any better. “Leave him be, pup. No doubt he has both a rationale for his actions and a plan for future action ready, though he may never deign to share them.”

Why would he? Blood of Curufinwë’s own father they both may be, but o how Tyelperinquar and Tyelkormo would bleat of perfidy, and betrayal, and all like manner of nonsense, did he speak to them plainly.

 _For_ _I would see you made King in Findaráto’s place_ , Curufinwë does not say to his divested son, who will inherit nothing unless his father wins it for him.

 _For Orodreth is nothing next to you, dolt as you are_ , Curufinwë does not say to his amiable son, who once he ascends to the throne in Findaráto’s regrettable absence will win the hearts of the people of Nargothrond as his sniveling half-cousin could never manage.

 _For I will be here to guide you, and my brother to guard you, and together we will make of this wretched excuse for a kingship something that all the eastern shores can look to with pride,_ Curufinwë does not say to his malleable son, who will surely be glad of his father’s hand at his shoulder, much as Curufinwë was once thrilled by Fëanáro's hand at his.

 

~ ~ ~

Tyelkormo learns of the plan first, when he returns from the hunt unexpectedly and comes upon Curufinwë rummaging through his store of weaponry.

And, much as suspected, even the great hunter of Fëanáro's line protests Curufinwë’s plan.

“Once was enough, and more than enough, brother!” Tyelkormo pleads, daring in his folly to lay a shaking hand to Curufinwë’s arm. Curufinwë scoffs, even as he rounds slowly upon his brother to remind him of the imprudence of his ways. As if the removal of Findaráto, a plan both elegant and untraceable, could conceivably be compared to the wasteful bloodshed upon the pearly docks of Alqualondë!

“It is murder, murder and treason!” Tyelkormo cries, thrashing in his seat, caught between the fear of Curufinwë’s knife and the constraints of Curufinwë’s ropes. As if it need have taken either, to buy his aid in the noblest of ventures, to win back their name and power!

“Tyelperinquar will not accede to it,” Tyelkormo whispers at the last, shivering and near silent beneath Curufinwë’s soothing hand. As if Curufinwë cannot win his own son’s compliance – or his own brother’s, for that matter!

Though it _is_ interesting, this time, that Tyelkormo’s distress at Curufinwë’s designs is such that it has taken more than a single look or touch to silence him.

 

~ ~ ~

And in the end, it is Tyelkormo who weeps like a babe, or as if he were the one struck to the heart for fear – no, for utter certainty – that he would raise an alarum against them once released. “Tyelpe, child – oh, _Tyelpe_!”

Tyelkormo will bring the guards down upon them with his noise, if the cries earlier have not already done so. But slapping him across the face would imprint the blood from Curufinwë’s hands there indelibly, and he has enough work as it is, attempting to rub out the damned spot before it gives them away.

“Ai, my Tyelpe!”

Fie upon his brother – a hunter and warrior and kinslayer, thrice-drenched, and still afraid? What need have they for fear, who can call them to account, when Curufinwë will ensure that there remains nothing to fear, nothing to be called to account for?

His mind bustles, even as he pulls up the sheet, hiding that face fallen slack yet grim.

 _He disavowed us, father and father’s brother alike_ , he could tell Findaráto, if ever his dim cousin even realizes or thinks to question where Tyelperinquar has gone.

 _Fears and scruples shake us; only in the great hand of Eru Illuvatar can we stand firm,_ he might tell Findaráto, if ever his dense cousin wonders why Curufinwë is not doing more to pursue the son whom he had conceived and sculpted and treasured, the first in a line once planned to mirror Fëanáro’s.

 _Only when we have our naked frailties hid, then let us meet, and speak, and plan_ , he will tell Findaráto, when or if ever his unlucky cousin returns from that mad quest that Curufinwë had plotted out for him. _And then, only then, let us question this most bloody piece of work, that a son should leave his father so, in treasonous malice_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Virtual candy corn to anyone who counts up the Macbeth references. . .


	3. the wild hunt

She is least-named, last-named among the Valië – less strong than Her mate, less known than Her brother. But that, my dear children, is a device of our times: we knew better, once, than to ignore She who hunts.

In vain did stout Tulkas caution His admirers: _disdain not Nessa, for Hers is the power of blood and its lusts._ In vain did shrewd Oromë warn His initiates: _scorn not Nessa, for Hers is the power of blood, and She will not be denied in the end._

Yet deny Her we did – all we saw was Her dancing, Her care for Her deer. My children, we forgot – what drives dancing? The blood. What drives leaping? The blood. What drives deer in their flight at the slightest of sounds?

The blood. Quick-tuned, always racing, a step ahead of the mind.

And o, how our loss of memory has been repaid. See now what has become of us! When our thanks lay unsaid and our devotions unmet, dancing Nessa withheld our satiation and we turned on each other – Elda upon Elda, hunter upon fisherfolk, blood upon blood upon blood upon blood!

Beasts we ourselves have become, and less even than beasts – mad wild things, driven on by that which we imagined we had left behind in the darkness.

For to Oromë may answer the beasts of the hunt – the creatures of holding, of hearth, and of home. To Nessa, though, answer all those that remain – the beasts of the wild, the wolds and the winds. And to Nessa too answer the beasts of our hearts, children: all those dark things within us that are driven to tug at their chains by the faintest of scents of the blood of the weak.

And though Oromë hunts, and Tulkas protects – Nessa, my children, leads a hunt of her own. _Ráva roimë_ – when all the world turns upon they who would scorn Her.

For the creatures of Nessa may flee her brother’s hunters, but in the end –

The boar will not die without goring its hunter. The wolf and the fox, run to earth, turn at bay with teeth snapping. The stag may be brought down, but horses are crippled and riders are thrown in pursuit of his wild flight.

Not that you know what a boar is, or a wolf or a fox, or even a stag, eh? Poor creatures, the lot of you – born on the Ice, and doomed to die on the Ice, I imagine. As are we all!

Not that Nessa will think twice of it. And not that She should.

For we forsook Her, children: your mothers and fathers, your elders one and all. And now it is you who are paying Her price.

For Nessa cares not if we persist in this mad venture east, following Fëanáro and his folk in their stolen ships. She cares not, that we have spurned the guidance of Her kin and run yipping at the heels of Her dark brother, no matter how cold His trail has gone.

No, Nessa cares not, for Her hunt speeds on, and now Her greatest prey have turned on each other. Her blood-due is met; Her price pays itself.

Think back, children: how many beasts of the sea and the sky have beset us? How many great white bears, how many large-toothed seals? How many birds, pale as snow, that swoop down from the sky – how many vast fish, breaking through the crusts of the ice?

What? Oh. Yes, I forget, sometimes: these things are not remarkable to you. They are only as things have ever been.

Well. Nothing more to be done about that then, I guess. Other than to exhort you: remember dancing Nessa, children. Find a new way to show Her the devotion She demands.

And perhaps She will hear you. Perhaps She will even remember that fawns and pups and kits must be spared in their own time, if anything of their kind is left to live on and dance with Her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the original draft of this was exactly 666 words long, and that felt a bit too much like something (Nessa?) giving me a sign, so i went back in all due haste and added a few more


	4. the iron price

She is not of those they call the Maiar – that strange people whose forms shift with their minds, their moods, their masters. No, Thurin’gweth’il is of the bat-folk – a secret shadow, a flutter of wings in the darkness, the blood-red eyes of the Light One’s Lieutenant when his own are otherwise occupied.

She is an integral part of his machine of war. A simple gear, perhaps, but an important one all the same – a central cogwheel upon whose spokes of information all other pieces must turn. She must function, and function well, in order for others to do the same.

Or so she assumes. For the bright-sharp soul of machinery is strange to her, the terms of its tongue oily and cloying upon a mouth built for the sap of fruit and the tang of blood, and the Lieutenant, that bright-burning-beautiful creature that none of the night may look full open without courting true blindness, is as stingy with giving information as he is insatiable in demanding it.

But for the first, Thurin’gweth’il is not the one who dictates the language that all in the great fortress must speak. That is the Lieutenant’s prerogative, as the strongest of its denizens, the only one able to snap and break the rest into submission. And for the second, Thurin’gweth’il knows that she is fastest of the Lieutenant’s many fliers – that is why she of her mother’s many children, after all, was accepted as payment in return for the clan’s lives.

Thurin’gweth’il is fastest, and sees farthest, and understands best the types of movement that the Lieutenant would likely seek out himself, were he able to tear himself from the shell of his fortress and fling himself joyous upon the winds as do his fliers.

Well. That, and also her rebellions against him have been the fewest and least successful.

So of the Lieutenant’s few remaining fliers, it is Thurin’gweth’il’s bat-fell that remains most intact.

Of the fortress’s swift-decreasing corps of fliers – her flock-mates falling all about her, wings-fingers- _skins_ torn from their bodies by the Lieutenant’s rage at their insurgences, their failures, their desertions and struggles to attempt the mad flight north and home to freedom – it is Thurin’gweth’il alone who can hug a nearly-whole bat-fell about her flightless form, can hide her face and protect her eyes when day dawns, grey and gloomy, above the fortress.

Her bat-fell is nearly even enough to block out the screams that echo about the roost almost every morn, as yet another flier finds that they do not retain enough fell to protect themselves against the scorching alien touch of the sun.

Only nearly enough, though. Only nearly.

 

~ ~ ~

And then, one night, nearly enough is no longer sufficient.

It should only have been a routine patrol. She had been assigned the long sweep north, toward the edge of the Blasted Plains, which span from the shadowed peaks beside the Lieutenant’s fortress and on toward the Iron Mountains at the farthest edge of the world.

(the less said about the Light One in residence there, the better)

(how peoples other than the bat-folk could call Him the Dark One, Thurin’gweth’il has never understood – so bright and cold He shines! How dangerous and powerful His light proclaims Him – He could never be of the darkness she has heard others claim of Him!)

But on the return sweep, Thurin’gweth’il finds her way back arrested. Her wings are fouled by some invisible thread, and she is pulled from the sky – to the hard earth she tumbles, and hears fragile bones shatter.

And when she is grounded, there are none to come to her aid – no mother-clan or flock-mates, no roost and no camp. Her struggles, her shrieks, are in vain – her captors, two Maia, can do as they will.

And they do.

The one in the form of a hound simply watches. The one in the form of a woman wields the knife.

Steels rips slits in her fell – slips beneath, slices through. The Maia is skinning her – as though Thurin’gweth’il were a beast.

Her shrieks become screams as the knife reaches wing. Her screams become shivers as her flightless form falls. 

She is not dead, when they are done with her – when the taller Maia stands, and slips her pale arms into Thurin’gweth’il’s fell. Indeed, her sight remains strong enough that she watches them leave her – blood-streaked, fell-adorned, they turn into the sunrise; the Maia-woman stretches out her arms, and Thurin’gweth’il’s wings carry her away south.

Toward the only roost Thurin’gweth’il has truly ever known.

The only lord she has ever served.

The only roost-mates she has ever had, and whose pain in the face of the sunlight she has only ever ignored.

But this day will dawn to find her the one unshielded, now, and she has neither the strength nor the means to hide herself.

And so, Thurin’gweth’il knows, she will burn.  


	5. beauty is terror

When the time comes – and it does, oh it does, just as he has always known that it will – Annatar already knows this much: Tyelperinquar will not be broken by pain.

This knowledge, though, does not mean that Annatar cannot indulge himself in imagining such a course of action. Something like fondness – soft and rose-colored, warm – colors his musings: how easy it would be, to slip back into that well-worn role! His ages as a smith prepared him well for the succeeding ones as a torturer – the burning curiosity and insatiable need for accomplishment that drove him to Morgoth’s service, he found, translated just as well to the cutting-room as they had to the forge. None long withstood his inquisitiveness or his care or his appetites, but he discovered that one might find fulfillment all the same even when the outcomes of one’s art were as inevitable as they were identical across applications.

Tyelperinquar, though. Knowing the Noldo as he does, Annatar imagines that his lover will prove of the mold who take pain as a challenge – the cast of prey who will succumb, eventually, but then leave him nothing for his troubles save the mangled remains of their bodies.

Mmm. Unacceptable. Annatar will have Tyelperinquar entire and his self-revelations besides, not merely the trappings of his lover that lie discarded beneath his hands while the Noldo’s self flees on to the despotism of the elder gods in the west.

It is not even about the rings, in the end, so much as it is about this. For true beauty, the Maia who-was-not-yet-Annatar in that oh-so-long-ago soon discovered, lay not in suffering. Agony was beautiful, yes, but in itself remained only a preparation for beauty – not the thing itself.

Beauty, true beauty, was to be found in terror – the anticipation of the knife, the expectation of the stroke, the mutilated ear cocked and straining for a whisper of breath in the dark.

It was only ever in terror that Annatar’s prey would play his games with him. Would become, beneath his tutelage, the best and brightest versions of themselves that they could be.

When finally they have recovered Tyelperinquar, then, he has the insensible Noldo laid out before him. Those who found him are killed, for none lays hand to his lover save him! Three strong men he demands, and two clothiers, ten archers – all the best that his captains can nominate, but too, all replaceable in their stations.

For none shall lay hand to Tyelperinquar and live, save Annatar. For none may see Tyelperinquar and live, but Annatar.

Then. Oh, and then!

Around and beneath the strongmen’s trembling hands Annatar removes his lover’s armor – disrobing him gently and bathing him tenderly. Before the strongmen’s fearful eyes, Annatar coaxes broken bone to pre-shattering strength, steel-slashed muscle to its initial suppleness, bloody flesh to its proper unblemished whole.

Then the clothiers bring forward the best of the treasuries – all that shone brightest among the Mírdain’s riches.

It is gold, then, that Annatar fits to his lover’s strong neck – gold that he sinks to his chest, gold secures to his waist. It is gold that he clasps to his lover’s limp arms – gold that he drapes at his loins, gold he pins to his lips, gold he drives through his ears.

So that when finally Tyelperinquar thrashes awake, he is adorned as he should be, and Annatar smiles.

It is obvious the Noldo had not thought to wake again.

“As if I would allow us such a sloppy ending, my love,” Annatar tells him, amused. “As if I would stoop so low as to treat you ill, when all I need of you – and you of me – might yet be accomplished with such ease.”

It is obvious the Noldo still thinks he will undergo torment.

“Tempting, given the annoyances you have caused me, but ultimately unnecessary. You may even choose to die rather than to speak with me, should that option seem preferable to you – it is utterly your choice. For, Tyelpe, I love you, and rarer still, respect you, and I would never cause you pain when other methods are available.”

 It is obvious that the Noldo believes Annatar is lying.

“I do not lie, sweet one. Let me tell you of the strategy I propose, then.” And Annatar describes his swift-forming plan.

“I would have you carried in state before me, my love: the bent of all my thought, the crown of all my labors. I would have you seen first by all who would see me – my enemies and allies, my subjects and soldiers. I would prefer, of course, that you remained with me in body and spirit alike, but then too I reject the tyrannous impulses of the elder Powers: I will not force you to remain upon these shores, my precious, should you wish to flee them. And me.”

He motions for the strongmen to lift his lover, and when Tyelperinquar has been raised to a seated position, comes to stand before him and kisses one gold-draped hand.

Then he motions again.

By the crux of his dead arms the strongmen lift Tyelperinquar – by the wrists of his numb hands they tie him high. The archers step forward; their bows nocked, they only await a word from Annatar to fire.

And Annatar looks up to his beautiful lover. “The choice of all that is to come lies with you, my love.”

Tyelperinquar’s breath comes in ragged gasps. The position he has been tied in – body straight, legs down and arms out – puts pressure upon his lungs, of course, but not enough to account for the wheezing. He is clever, Annatar’s lover, and has obviously seen to the depths of this plan.

For his gold-draped body – dead or alive at his choosing, whether to escape increasing pain or to protect his ill-gotten knowledge – will be carried in state, as Annatar’s banner, though his own people and city lie smoldering behind them.

His kinsfolk will see him thus. And believe he betrayed them, for a life of luxury in Annatar’s lap.

Should Tyelperinquar die in such a state, his kinsfolk will abandon Middle-earth as a battleground lost. Annatar will reign unhindered, all the eastern shores brought beneath his scepter, rings or no rings.

And the weight of it all shall fall to Tyelperinquar’s account, whether justly or not. Whether he lives or he dies, then, what he has claimed the subjugation of Middle-earth will be upon his account, and his own naïve beliefs about sovereignty aside, his kinfolk will never let him find rest.

So Tyelperinquar is terrified. And he has never before looked so beautiful.

“Again, it is utterly up to you, my precious. Now. What of my rings?”

 

 


	6. blood is thicker than water

The blood of a soldier’s covenant is said to be stronger than the water of the womb. Claimed, in fact, and then declaimed with pride, as though such circumstances – warriors preferring self-forged bonds among those of equal strength and experience – were somehow preferable, or stouter, or more fervent.

Whoever began such a rumor is a tremendous fool, thinks Turukáno. For starters, they never explained _why_. And, in the aftermath of their shortcomings, white beaches run red.

Crimson and silver, scarlet and pearl. Dressing up the words – _covenant_ instead of _shared bloodlust_ , _soldier_ instead of _killer_ , _the womb_ rather than _the very people you have built up about you_ – changes not their consequences: virgin blood has been spilt upon virgin sand.

If he ever musters the strength to stand again, or even to lift his head from his hands – his hands from his eyes – then Turukáno that knows he will see the sad fruits of their labor. Below him, all along the quay, lie the bodies, abandoned as abject and unwanted.

Discarded, as though those who wore them had tired of a season’s fashions, and cast off the outmoded clothing to seek finer and better.

The red of Fëanáro’s star; the white field of Nolofinwë’s.

The red of Alqualondë’s mariners; the white of their pearl-strewn shores.

Turukáno vows that he will seek these colors no more.

 _I will pay any price you ask of me,_ he promises Ulmo behind the walls of his heart. _Anything you ask of me, anytime that you ask it_.

_Only weaken the bond of this mad soldiers’ covenant. May my kinsmen – my sister, my daughter, their children to come – turn first to each other for strength and for love._

But Turukáno names not his brothers, embroiled as they are in the machinations of Fëanáro’s sons.

_Please, Wavewalker._

He names not his father, too caught up in Fëanáro’s own deceits.

 _Please_.


	7. free choice

Makalaurë wakes alone.

Or, well. . .

That is to say, he _imagines_ that he has re-awakened. And likewise, he also _believes_ that he is alone. But these things are difficult to tell, sometimes – after all, he had also thought that he was alone right up until the moment he had died, as the bandits who beset him were quite good, for men, at covering their approach.

This, though, is slightly more of a surprise. For he has regained his sight and his mind from a most formal position – laid out upon his back upon a hard stone plinth, his hands clasped about a tarnished silver harp that is lain across his chest. And when he puts the harp aside and sits, he finds that he is clothed in a penitent’s raiment: not for him any longer the scarlet of his house and the gold of its ornaments, but instead a coarse grey weave and plain sandals without any adornment whatsoever.

And when he raises his head to look about himself, he finds that the famed Halls of Mandos are empty all about him.

 _(that is – from their size and their atmosphere, and his previous disposition, being dead and all – he_ thinks _that these are the Halls of Mandos. and here again with the narrative uncertainty – who ever heard of a bard who could not control his own tale? regardless of his own impotency, though, where else but the Halls could boast such impossible architecture – such fanciful columns, so controlled a darkness beneath so invisible a roof? where but the Halls would one see such tendrils of mist, curling tame about the edges of floors and the curves of walls, their movements dictated by aesthetic judgement rather than weather patterns?)_

And yet. And yet! Makalaurë stands, with some difficulty – his legs know/remember/protest that they are dead, and all but collapse beneath him – and makes his way to the wall nearest the plinth.

No, it is solid.

But something else _(he knows not what)_ is not.

It is more than just that the Halls appear empty – more than just that his footfalls echo oddly loud upon the stone, more sound than should be made by simple leather and sole.

It is, it is. . .

Signs of disrepair, Makalaurë thinks.

For a closer look reveals that there are cracks winding about the bases of the pillars.

Cracks in the structure, a slight musty smell to the plinth upon which he was lain, and ephemeral cobwebs, empty and ragged, swaying in the playful mists.

_(and what creatures might spin such things, here and now? best not to really think)_

His dead _(is it dead, though? and is he not spirit here, rent and disembodied? funny, these clothes and that harp do feel solid enough)_ heart does not beat, and so it cannot race, cannot pound, at the discovery, but – Makalaurë feels _something_ odd.

_(this is not the afterlife he had imagined he’d have – a chance to make his pitiable amends to those slain gone before him, which he would do in any wretched way left to him, and with such humility and goodwill that they would be grudgingly forced to acclaim him a changed creature)_

And so he leaves that place.

Turns about, his back to the plinth, and walks away.

No one stops him.

And then, when days later _(or decades, or Ages, or hours),_ Makalaurë’s feet lead him to a cracked doorway, and his _(dead)_ heart _(or his conscience maybe? his pride, or his fear?)_ urges him to walk through it, to follow that weak and watery beam of sunlight piercing the gloom of the Halls –

and Makalaurë does –

He is not obstructed. He is not waylaid.

He simply walks out of the Halls.

And there, spread out beneath him, Valinor lies empty. Faded green, faded light, and its roads and dwellings all silent and spare.

If this is his own version of hell, then it is painfully apt.

And if it is not, then. . .

No, Makalaurë decides with a sinking _(dead)_ heart, he prefers – it is better – to believe that this is damnation.

The other option – that all has faded, after all, and he is as alone here as he was in the east – is far worse.


End file.
